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About

Welcome to the Dividend Drive. Here comes the obligatory potted biography bit. However, it is mostly an explanation of the raison d’etre of the site.

Potted Biography

First, the little potted biography. I am a 26 27-year-old British guy from the United Kingdom.

I have spent most of my working life as a writer and researcher of one sort or another (by accident more than design). I have written for the local press, trade journals and academia. All—as you can imagine—completely different from one another.

This site—started in January 2014—is another part of my writing universe. It is intended to catalogue my investing journey as I look to save hard, invest well and earn a growing, secondary income stream.

I’m On FIRE

Why am I doing this? Well, FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) quite simply. In other words, I want to be able to invest well and live within my means well and long enough so that I am able to earn enough “passive” income to live on without requiring a wage.

In other words, freedom from the financial pressure of having to live from wage packet to wage packet.

This I plan to do through a variety of means. Chiefly this revolves around—as you would expect with the sites name—dividend-paying shares. However, I also plan to use peer-to-peer lending platforms, bonds and gilts, cash savings accounts, commodities and more to help me in my journey where appropriate.

You’re FIREd?

Does that mean I want to retire when I hit that mark? Not really (hence why I highlighted “requiring” above). At the moment I work in a job that I enjoy and continue to enjoy. However, the point of what I am trying to achieve is pretty simple. I want to have the option not to work. Why? For many reasons:

Security—For me, this is the big one. Being able to not be scared by unemployment is a big draw. My early life was scarred by constant employment/unemployment cycles of my father who worked in construction which left us often living hand-to-mouth.

Freedom—The ability to actually be able to choose what I do in life. If I dislike my job, to be able to leave and continue to live until I reach the point when/if I find a job I do want to do.

Family—Currently I have no children. I have been with Miss DD since university and a Mini DD or two is almost certainly part of our future. I want to be able to be around my family if that moment does arrive. As such, the ability to—hopefully—work part-time thanks to my secondary income stream would be highly prized. Failing that, any additional income would be a great relief so that their childhood would not mirror mine in the financial stakes.

Read and Feed Back

That’s about it. I hope you enjoy going around the site and reading its content.

Nearly all the posts on the site are included on by “Every(ish) Post” page. However, those posts related to a specific purchase are to be found on my “Holdings” page. if you want to see how I am progressing month by month with my dividend income, see my “Dividends Received” page.

Anyway, please do feel free to email me below with any comments or queries you want to pass on to me or if you have any additional ideas on how to help me in my journey. I look forward to hearing from you.

The site is still a little ragged around the edges (for instance, I'd like to update this page a little which is currently little more than "holding" content). However, the site does what I need it to do and hopefully is straightforward for visitors to navigate around!

Indeed there is a growing number of us it seems. The more the merrier!